Mike Monroe: Lakers remain team to beat

Gregg Popovich uttered the words “the Lakers are still the best team in the West” at least nine times while addressing various reporters on the three stops the Spurs made on the first leg of their annual rodeo road trip. We have the digital bytes on a recorder to prove it.

The fact Thursday’s game against the Lakers was Stop No. 2 contributed to an obsessive insistence on reminding the basketball-loving world there is no trophy presented to the team with the NBA’s best regular-season record.

Popovich’s message over and over and over: Pay no attention to the fact my team leads the Lakers by eight games in the loss column.

What Popovich knows, better than most, is how difficult it is for any team, regardless of talent level, to repeat as NBA champion.

The Lakers are lurching through a season marked more by turmoil than triumph, and yet they remain No. 2 in the West and No. 1 on Popovich’s list of teams to fear.

He knows who is to blame for their distractions.

“Their struggles are overblown by the media,” he said. “They are who they are. They’ve been doing this a long time, and they just won two (titles) in a row again.

“No doubt, there’s going to be nights it’s just not all there emotionally. Now that we’ve got the best record, we run into that, and we haven’t won a championship in a long time. So we don’t even have that excuse, and it happens to us.”

Lakers coach Phil Jackson reiterated last week that he will head to retirement at season’s end, no matter what his team does in the playoffs.

Popovich has committed to remaining on the Spurs’ bench as long as Manu Ginobili wears silver and black. He is going to miss his rivalry with a coach whose accomplishments he deems so remarkable they are nearly unbelievable.

“Only teams that have been there know how really, really, really difficult it is (to repeat),” he said. “People can talk about it and say, ‘Gosh, that’s a long process, and it must be tough.’ They’ve got no clue.

“It’s a monster. It is really, really difficult to win a championship. That’s why what Phil’s done (in Los Angeles) and in Chicago was ridiculous. It makes no sense to me. I don’t know how anybody can do that. It’s just remarkable.”

As he insisted to reporters, Popovich was not “blowing smoke” about the Lakers’ pre-eminence in the West. Watching Andrew Bynum in Thursday’s game was a reminder. The Lakers’ long-armed 7-foot center frequently snatched rebounds from the grasp of shorter Spurs who had established position in front of him.

The Spurs, Popovich said, have to improve defensively if they want to be “the last team standing.” He gave Tiago Splitter, his rookie center, a short stint against Bynum on Thursday night, a possible preview of coming playoff attractions.

He liked what he saw, even as he insisted Splitter wasn’t on the court long enough to form an opinion.

It is clear that in the last 32 regular-season games, Popovich must discover if Splitter and other young Spurs — DeJuan Blair and Gary Neal — have the skills and knowledge to bring the defense up to playoff level.

“I’m not sure about a couple of the young guys, if they can catch on that quickly and get it done right,” he said. “… These last 30 games, or whatever we’ve got left, are very important in that respect.”
mikemonroe@express-news.net